From the desk of CabelPortland, Oregon 97205

November 8th, 2010

Transmit 4. It’s easy to use, but there’s a whole lot under the surface. And while we try to design apps for the majority, sometimes we throw in some power user features for the pros. As the Finnish always say, “always add a few extra blood dumplings when cooking mykyrokka for a tonttu-ukko!“

So here are 15 “secrets” of Transmit 4. Hopefully you’ll learn at least one new thing!

1. Add Custom Icons to your Favorites

Every single one of your Transmit favorites can have its own, easy-to-recognize icon. Kenichi has provided a (beautiful) starter set of 16 — just click on the icon when editing a favorite!

You can also load your own images. (We’ve found the Flurry icon sets from the Iconfactory to be a particularly good set.) And if you choose “Use Server Favicon”, we’ll do our best to get the icon from the server itself and slap it on a nice little label for you.

2. Show the File Count

Add a counter to your path bar to see some useful numbers. Just choose View ▸ Show Item Count.

3. Skip Files Automatically

It’s a hugely powerful new feature that’s a little bit hidden: in Transmit 4, you can have Transmit arbitrarily skip files based on any number of rules. Hate .svn or .git folders? Never want to accidentally transfer your apps to a specific server? There’s lots to explore here.

4. Customize Your Favorites View

Right-click in a Favorites list to reveal a secret menu: “Use Small Icons” and “Arrange By”. The former gives you a much more compact list. The latter will allow you to perform a one-time sort of your items.

5. Try Dock Send

Inspired by the late Erik J. Barzeski (he’s alive), Dock Send is a great feature for those of you who quickly fling items to various favorites all day long.

First, edit a Favorite, and enable Dock Send.

Make sure the favorite has both a Remote Path (where your files go) and a Local Path (where your files come from) assigned to it.

Now, drag a file from your specified Local Path to the Transmit dock icon.

Transmit will look at the local path of the file you just dropped, then look at your favorites and say, “Hey, is Dock Send enabled for any favorite that uses this Local Path? Oh, here’s one! I’ll connect and upload this file to the specified Remote Path right away!”

Does that make sense? Based on where the file came from, Transmit picks the right place for it to go.

With judicious use of Dock Send, you can have a full suite of virtual droplets that are as easy as dragging items to the dock icon.

6. Make a Droplet

Don’t forget about droplets! Save them anywhere on your disk, send them to clients, or put them in your Dock, and get a system-wide drag target for instant uploads. Just click Save as Droplet… when editing a Favorite. (Make sure Transmit is installed on any machine using a Droplet.)

7. Quickly Copy a Web URL

First, edit your Favorite and set a proper “Root URL” for your Favorite. I.e., the base web URL that your files are served from. Then, connect to your server, right click an item, and choose “Copy URL”.

(Bonus sub-tip: right click and choose Preview In Browser… for instant preview action!)

8. Navigate in Both Sides, Simultaneously

Do your local files share the same hierarchy as your remote files? With Linked Folder Navigation, why not have Transmit automatically change both sides at once when as you navigate?

Now, every time you open a folder, Transmit will check to see if there’s a folder with the same name on the other side. If there is, Transmit will open that folder too!

Transmit 4 is pretty smart about this — if you navigate into a folder that doesn’t have a twin on the other side, that’s fine. When you return to the folder you branched from, it’ll start paying attention again.

9. Make “Get Info” Automatically Update As You Change Files

The traditional Get Info window is good for learning about a single item. But maybe you want to Get Info on a whole bunch of things, and you don’t want to open 4,000 windows.

No problem. It’s easy to create a Get Info “Inspector” — just hit ⌥⌘I (Option-Command-I).

Now, as you change files, Get Info will automatically update.

10. Learn Some Drag and Drop Tricks

Did you know you can drag files into all areas of the path bar?

Dropping on the folder icon will add a folder to Places for quick access.

Dropping items onto any component of the path bar will either move or transfer those item to that folder.

Lastly, dropping a folder into the empty space on the right (or the local/remote switch button) will change Transmit to that folder.

There’s also spring-loaded folders. When dragging, simply hover over a folder and watch it spring open allowing you to drill down the folder hierarchy mid-drag. The file lists also trigger activation, so dragging items from other applications or another Transmit window is quick and easy. While dragging pause over a file list for a second and Transmit will activate the window/application allowing for seamless drag and drop without obstruction.

Another useful AND “secret” feature is the ability to drag re-order file operations in the Transfers list. Simply grab a top-level row and drag it to a new location in the list, boom, instant prioritization of your transfers.

11. Show Folders Above Files

It’s totally possible. (This is a Windows thing, yeah?)

Choose View ▸ Show View Options, then check Show folders above files.

12. Zip Files Directly On an SFTP Server (And More)

If you’re connected via SFTP, and are connected to a Unix server, it’s super simple. Don’t waste a transfer!

Select an item, and choose File ▸ Send SSH Command. If you click on the little action button, we’ve pre-loaded “zip” and “unzip” shortcuts, but you can execute any UNIX command.

14. Get Image Dimensions using Quick Look

It’s a minor point, but worth mentioning — if you use Quick Look on any image, local or remote, we’ll put the dimensions in the title bar.

15. Make a Local/Local or Remote/Remote Window

This one is pretty fundamental, but seems to slip by some — it’s possible to set both sides of Transmit’s split window to the same view.

Just click the tiny icon on the right side of the path bar to toggle between a local or remote view.

If you want to manage your local hard drive with the ease of Transmit, or if you want to easily fling a file from one server to another, there’s no better way.

16. Bonus Tip! Customize Keyboard Shortcuts

It’s possibly one of the greatest hidden features in Mac OS X, and works for almost all apps.

Want, say, Send SSH Command… to have a keyboard shortcut?

First, open System Preferences ▸ Keyboard, and click Keyboard Shortcuts.

Now, select “Application Shortcuts” on the left, and click the “Plus” .

From the pop-up menu, choose Transmit.

Now, let’s type in “Send SSH Command…”, and give it the shortcut of our choosing!

(The ellipsis is important! If the menu item has one, you need one. Hit Option-Semicolon to type it.)

That’s it! Without even having to relaunch Transmit, your shortcut has been added. One note: this can be tricky for dynamic menu items that change based on what’s selected — you’ve gotta match the name exactly.

Shawn Grimes

Christopher Pond

Awesome. Droplet Dock tip is great, along with the Drag and Drop Tricks! What if (feature idea) — when multiple tabs are open — you could drag and drop a file right onto a tab to send the file to that server? :-)

Cabel

Martin

Now it works with OpenMountedFinderWindow off. But would love to see a growl or similar alert instead, when connection to a drive is established (or could not be established, or is lost) using transmitmenu. The same kind of alert you show, when uploading files using transmit. Just an idea.

Hutch

Nik

Sebastian

Thanks for these tipps. What I still miss on Dock Feature: I would like to drag and drop a mail from an email and transmit should save it in the local folder and on the remote folder. This will simplify my live. :) And I need this only for one folder! :-)

aequalsb

i see here on this page about organizing “A favorites” list by name or address with a right-click – but how about organizing “THE favorites” list – i want to automatically organize by name (where THE favorites list is the list of folders in the left sidebar that contains iDisk, Bonjour, and History icons)

also, i would like to hide iDisk, Bonjour, and History from the Favorites list. how do i do that?

ps: Transmit is one of the most powerful and most droolingly incredible applications i have EVER used. i’ve been using it for over 5 years. recently, i spent over 4 hours searching for similar capability in Windows FTP apps, trying to find a parallel, and concluded it did not exist – features like mounting an FTP disk *omg drool* and others

quantize

fingerscrossed

kudos for your ftp client…i’m serious!
it could have been casted for the movie kickass. ;)
the only thing i’m missing is a fxp functionality. from time to time i have to transfer a huge amount of data of customers’ sites from one server to another. in those cases it would be really comfortabel to have a fxp feature instead of downloading everything locally and then uploading the stuff again to a remote server. this would really be the killer feature to knock out the rest completely. ;)

Hamranhansenhansen

Bayswater

I never paid any attention to what Transmit does, other than move files back and forth from a remote server. Almost paid for a Finder enhancer that give a side by side view, and there it was in Transmit all the time.

shane

One of my favorite features, that some people may not know, when you open a document into a certain application in Transmit (let’s say an .html file into BBEdit) then edit the document and Save it; Transmit automatically uploads it back to the server to the same file, no questions asked. It works wonders when making websites and editing CSS. Also convenient to make small corrections in images through Photoshop. You can also handle how Transmit deals with certain file extensions through the Prefs.

Definitely my favorite FTP app, been recommending it for the last couple years to people. Thank you much!

ens

Peter

The linking thing is great (tip 8), but it’s not “sticking” for me. For example, when I first set up linking, everything works, but when I reopen Transmit, even though the linking button shows it’s active, it doesn’t work. I have to deselect and then reselect the button for linking to work. Perhaps, it’s something I’m doing wrong, but it seems to me that either the button needs to turn itself off if linking is not active, or it needs to remember the files/folders and work when reopening the site.

James Manuel

Nathan

LOVE IT, thanks for the tips. I’d especially wanted to get rid of the iDisk/Bonjour favorites for AGES.

Only one more request:

Is there any way to set the keyboard shortcut to recognize repeated taps? That is, when I hit the letter ‘g’, for example, it cycles through all items that start with ‘g’. Currently, it works only for folders, but not files, and it drives me bananas…

Thanks gents!

Remart

Great, thanks for this, much appreciated. I use Transmit constantly everyday, with more 70 favorites this software is in my top used programs and learning more about it very useful.
Only the Folder Linking button doesn’t work yet for me (that one seems very useful) but I’ll get it to work hopefully. Thanks again, and nice Blog design!

Vinny Troia

it would be great if there was an option to “open in terminal”. That way we could also use transmit as an SSH manager. I don’t know why, but SSH managers in Mac OSX are non-existant. Something as simple as Putty never made it to osx.

Josh

Ben

What I really miss is a way to edit very easly symlinks on the remote server! Under Windows this is no problem with WinSCP – very easy and smooth, just from the contextmenu. I would really appreciate to see this feature in the next transmit release!

—marlyse

Point 2) Show File Count was neat to check-out but I realized that the numbers up there are driving me crazy so I want to hide it again… but the option is grayed out?! How can I reverse to hiding the file count?

muromedia

Lane

Lane

jack sprinkauer

Just freshly re-installed OS 10.6.6 and downloaded panic 4.5.1.
Can’t launch it. It stops responding after drawing the menus.
Not sure what the problem could be. Is there an older version I could try? Thanks

Darren

So …. this is just a revolution in remote file management. But it doesn’t solve ONE problem …

Although you can mount smb:// shares in finder, it’s a bloody disaster – file transfers at 6k a second!? It takes more than 20 seconds to list folder contents in finder even though the trusty command line takes 0.2s meaning it’s not a samba problem, it’s a finder problem. Someone can do a better job than Apple on this. Apparently its been a problem for years but the dudes in cupertino don’t use Windows so they don’t acknowledge the issue.

So a samba implementation would make this awesome app 100% for me. In the roadmap by chance?

Miles

I second Vinny Troia’s comment from 12/17/2010 about adding an option to open in Terminal. As much as I’d like to move to Transmit, the lack of this single feature (available in Cyberduck and others) prevents me from doing so.

Alyda

Donna

Wow thank you for this! I’d love to see more posts like this too. I love Transmit, but I feel I’ve only scratched the surface of what I can do with it. Especially with all the cool new features in version 4.

Bret

Is there shortcut to returning to the original favorites folder? Many times after I log into an FTP site, I’ll start going all over my local drive, pulling up files and uploading them. But, at some point, I want to return to where I started.

Jeremiah Sandahl

I’m not able to get the disk function to work any more. I have tried everything I can think of. When I connect to an FTP as a Disk, it does not show up in Finder. Then when I try to eject it, I get “Cannot eject disk” “The disk (null) is in use and cannot be ejected.”

Amazing Rando

Kristin P

The old version of Transmit (v3) automatically ‘picked’ up the favicons if present when you connected to the server. It seems like v4 you have to set them all manually….??? I have a lot of clients and guess I’ll just set each one manually. Wish there were a preference to globally “use server favicon” if one exists.

Other upgrades look great, but haven’t tried them out yet. Thx for the article.

John Collins

I just added a laptop as a little brother for my Mac Pro and wanted to know if I there’s some way to copy all the favorites from one Mac to another. I have many and would like to save the time of entering them again. I tried copying the Metadata folder over, but it gets emptied as soon as I open Transmit.

Love it, couldn’t get along without it!

Thanks,
John

psz

in the previous version, when using “copy path” Transmit would nicely copy the path including the username in password for easy use when mailing ftp links to e.g. clients that do not have ftp clients. Where is that feature now?

psz

Donny Nyamweya

Is it possible to setup DockSend so that if a sync’d directory is updated on the remote location (e.g Amazon S3), the changes are also replicated locally? I am trying to keep Aperture libraries and some other items in sync between machines and I do not want to pay for DropBox since I am already quite deep in Amazon AWS.

That said, I just started using Transmit, and I mindlessly paid for the application before even installing the trial! I guess that says a lot about the confidence that I have developed in your products after using Coda since I got my first Mac 4 yrs ago! Keep it up guys!!

Reg

Christian

Here’s the scenario, I’ve got a zip. Upload it via a droplet. Copy the remote url. Send email. That bit, where it says “Copy the remote url”, is it possible to have this automated to clipboard? Now I still need to use the main Transmit or a browser. Already played with automator but to no avail. Oh and… Awesome!

R2

Jeremy

I bought this after I got tired of all the bugs in Forklift2. Panic always makes solid software. What I miss from Forklift though is that the tab system is not for each pane, but rather for a set of two panes. I often want to switch servers without having to close the connection in between. I know that I can open another window, but that’s not as convenient. Also, I find that Forklift’s “linking between panes” is much better. SMB support would of course also be nice.

gordon

Wolfgang

Mikkel

I’ve set Transmit to show hidden files, and it makes .htaccess and the like show up in the server (remote) view.. but not in the local view. How can I make Transmit show .htaccess files in the local viewß

Eugene

Paul Hudson

Wondering if anyone can explain; I load up two sites in favourites but it does not connect BUT if I then go to the FTP panel and type the same thing in the connection is made. Also I cannot see how to save the favourite details for use in the FTP panel. Can I do this?

Hammy Havoc

Ken Snyder

I have setup a rule to skip files which start with .svn and .git with the hope to avoid transfering the version control files but why I synchronise it still shows these files as being part of the synchronisation! Please help as this is a real problem for me.

Di

Is there a way to get the synchronize w/ files to skip to be recursive? I have a rule to skip all files that are not php, but that makes it “skip” the directories also and it doesn’t fine files I want to sync within them.

Walter

Just upgraded to the new rMBP and I want to transfer my favorites to the new computer.
MobileMe is not an option since Apple turned off this this function :(
What do you recommend?
Is there a way to export OR maybe use Dropbox???
Thanks

Margaret M

I just moved my favorites in Transmit 4 to a new computer. I registered the program and copied the ~/Library/Application Support/Transmit folder and the ~/Library/Preferences files (look for com.panic.Transmit.foobar). One caveat: the passwords did not move (as expected). But all the set-up details did. Whew!

Peter S

Lhuis

Peter

Guys – just bought a copy and think Transmit is great. Can I offer two pieces of advice

1. You should have tool tips over some of the UI elements. They’re very petty icons but I’m not sure what they mean until I hit ;em. On a FTP application, I don’t want to be guessing what stuff is and zap a live site.

2. When I download a file or folder, Transmit will download it to whatever folder is open on my local pane. And vice versa. Dreamweaver’s approach was much better as the file always ended up where it should be and not relative to what I had open in the local or remte pane.

Peter

Crates

I love Transmit and I use it quite a bit, but I’m having the same problem other users have mentioned here: when synchronizing or downloading folders that contain new files within folders underneath them, it doesn’t seem to refresh the contents of the sub-folders before performing the operation. It’s a deal-breaker, honestly. All of my sites are starting to have issues and I know I can’t get a reliable backup using Transmit because if another developer or a site user has uploaded new content that Transmit doesn’t already know about, it never gets downloaded during a sync operation. Here’s hoping you guys can fix this in the next version.

Dave

Gotta agree with Crates and others. This needs to be a configurable option. Caching speeds up access and that may make some happy but it causes workflow/syncing issues and that’s worse then pretending Transmit is faster than it is.

Dave

Chris N

Caching of files which have changed (same name, different time stamp and size) is definitely creating issues for me. I can’t regenerate a CSV file and copy it – I get the previous version which is somehow magically cached somewhere! Refresh Finder does not seem to do anything. Please disable this for Disk Mounts!!

Seba

Billy

Transmit is a great way to keep my website quickly synced. However, I find it curious that there is no place at panic.com to “log in” to our purchase account. How can I notify you if my email address changes? What if we need to get a discount for a past purchase or retrieve a serial number, but our email address at the time of purchase no longer exists?

Rei

Hans Anders

Great tips. What I would really like is to be able to search within files for a piece of code or just plain txt. This is possible in TotalCommander’s FTP client and is really really handy. Any hope this feature can be added soon …

ingemar

Lance

I was trying to figure out what a password was on one of my favorites, how do I do that? I did this from one of the posts above which didn’t help, how do I go to Terminal and undo it:

Psz: Yes. Type this command into Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities):
defaults write com.panic.Transmit CopyURLWithoutLogin 0
And that’ll do the trick. Please note that this is not recommended, as any user with access to your computer can very easily capture passwords. (That’s why it’s no longer the default.)

Daryl

I’ve been using Transmit for years wishing it had a “Synchronised Browing” mode, and discovered today that it’s doing it by itself but I had no idea how I turned it on! Reading this article helped me discover that Link Folder Navigation” exists, thank you!

MARS

Say i upload a JPG that i want to send to a client by email. I upload the jpg file using transmit and then i right click it and select copy URL and i’m assuming Transmit will make sure it’s the correct URL that i can share by email, skype, etc.

But when i send it, it just creates a path from my ftp that is not accessible by the recipient, and that doesn’t save me time, because i have to open a browser go to the file, then copy that url and send that one to the client. So not real time savings here in that department.

Also opening in a browser from within Transmit is painfully slow.

What am i dong wrong here?

Thanks.

Paul (Aussie)

Will there ever be a feature that can automatically notify you via email or message that a file has dropped into a certain favourite – one of my contractors regularly uploads things but I only know it’s there by logging in and looking constantly.

Ben

Shame because Transmit has a much more intuitive UI, but those features completely and utterly fail. Cyberduck has a contextual menu that simply does the zip/unzip without all the BS that Transmit requires (yet still doesn’t succeed at). Annoying…

Bud

ZEOS

1)
Another mistake program Transmit
Please look at this video: dropbox.com/s/6b2rluj2u4kdlyd/new_transmit_bug.mov

2)
Have a look to another video, please. I tried to describe problem more detailed there. I had possibility to demonstrate how Inspector hangs up sometimes. Do you plan to fix Inspector’s behavior and calculation of amount of files in the new version?

ThomasT

Just recently, i noticed that when i dragged my files to a Droplet, transfer would not start until i click on the Transmit Icon on my springboard, then i would see the initiating and connection. This just happens randomly too. In the past, i would just drag the files to the Droplet and it load the ftp site automatically and uploads.

Anyone else having this issue?

GSCopy Pro v6.0 (RoboCopy Alternative) with Open File Agent

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Go To:>> http://www.gurusquad.com/GSCOPYPRO

Andy M

I’ve noticed that since Mavericks (and an update of Transmit) that there is a delay before Transmit updates a save to a remote file.

For example, I’m browsing a remote dir via ssh, I edit a file in my editor, and when I save I have to wait for Transmit to begin syncing the modified file. If I activate the Transmit app, it will start updating, but otherwise there can be a 10-30 second delay. Anyone else seen this? Is it a Mavericks ‘power saving’ issue?

Rado

Daniel

The delay is very annoying, also it takes me 30 mins a day by just editing live websites.
Can you please provide a fix or more info. Is this a Maverick thing (maverick breaks a lot) or a Transmit delay?

Thanks!

James

Hey T4 is a FAB product, no doubt about it!
May I offer a feature request, though? When “Copy URL” is selected it would be helpful to have the http and not the ftp prefix.
Keep up the GREAT WORK!
One happy customer,
James.

Jay

I’m using the unzip feature on Transmit, but it seems that these pesky DS_Store files are being dropped in almost all my unzipped directories. Is there a way to prevent the DS_Store files from being created, or a quick way to remove them all?

Doug

Hey guys! Excellent stuff with Transmit. Love it! Just have one question… I have some old FTP servers that don’t like new folder names of ‘New Folder’. I get an error. Is there anywhere in the setting that I can change the default ‘New Folder’ to ‘New_Folder’ when creating a new folder on an FTP site? I tried sending the raw mkdir command, but no luck. Any info would be awesome! Thanks!

Christopher S. C.

I’d like to add my own experience to what Andy M reported, namely that since upgrading to Mavericks saving changes to files opened remotely (I happen to use Sublime Text 3), there is a delay before the transmission initializes. It can be anywhere from a few seconds up to 30 seconds.

Is anyone apart from Andy M and I experiencing the same behavior?

Cheers,

Chris

Christopher S. C.

Sarah Alawami

As a mac user and a ` user for 4 years I have to say I did not know about these tips. Now if there would be a way to copy from one server to another that would be cool. I can’t remember how to do it via ssh so the file send ssh command is out but yeah very nice!

Peter Wooster

I’m adding my vote to the cached directory listings issue. I’ve now had a couple of client sites ruined by the fact that transmit didn’t show changes made from another machine. Today it failed several times telling me it couldn’t switch to remote subdirectories that had been removed.

Is there a way to force a directory update? Refresh seems to only refresh the outer directory and not subdirectories. If not I’m going to have to go back to 1980 and get out my old bell-bottom jeans and the command line ftp, or rsync where I have ssh.

Peter Wooster

Please DO BE AWESOME and answer serious questions posted 2 months ago. Again, several hours wasted by unrefreshed subdirectories. I reported this as a bug and got no satisfaction. And yes, this is negative, with just cause.

Zoinks! Graphics

Did the Terminal commands change for step #13? (Hide iDisk/Bonjour Favorites or Prevent Transmit Disk from Opening Windows) I’ve been trying with Transmit v. 4.4.6 and “Bonjour” is still listed at the top of the Favorites bar of the initial “pre-connect” right pane. If possible, I’d also like to get rid of the “History” link at the top of that Favorites section.

F. L.

I also encounter the problem reported several times for the not updating files when they are changed by a remote machine. The timestamp is not updated, nor the changes. I have to eject the mounted remote system and mount it back again to see the changes

Tom Coady

Changing server passwords while Transmit is running may prevent SSH access from favourites, even after updating the settings in Transmit! Was doing my head in until I finally quit and restarted Transmit. Must have cached the old passwd somewhere!

Jeffrey Adik

How can I use Transmit w/ SFTP from my personal user account & successfully login to a server using a root account… somewhere along the way, Transmit seems to be looking at my personal ssh keys, and can’t access the root ssh keys (valid). It’s a monumental pain having to use a lesser solution…

Would love to know how to fix this!

Jon

Does Transmit have a search feature allowing me to search for files by name nested in other files? Or can I only search for files within the current open directory? I’ve tried Fetch and asked Yummy for this feature, but it seems they’re taking forever to add it.. I need to search for something like “logo.png” nested 8 directories deep and find it.. mmhmm

Charles

Rogerson

Long Path Fixer presents you with a simple list of files and folders in the current directory (including “hidden” files and folders). You can drag and drop files or folders onto it and it will navigate directly to path of whatever you dropped.

Khad Young

I came here looking for a way to set a keyboard shortcut for “Copy URL” in the right-click menu. Turns Out™ although the keyboard shortcut doesn’t show up in the right-click menu like it does for items in the menu bar, you can set a custom shortcut in System Preferences all the same. Woohoo!